An Investigation Into English Listening Strategies Used By Students In A Senior High School

It is universally recognized that listening is one of the most important skills in language learning.Over the past decades,lots of studies have been conducted in identifying listening strategies that good language learners use.However,most of the studies on listening strategies use were conducted abroad,and little research has been carried out on the use of listening strategies in China.In addition,most of the previous studies on listening strategies have focused on the use of listening strategies by English major students or non-English majors in universities,but neglected the middle school students' use of listening strategies.Therefore,it is necessary for us to conduct research on listening strategy use by senior high school students so as to gain a comprehensive understanding of students' strategy use in this area.This study aims at examining the tendency of using listening strategies by senior high school students,and attempts to find out the effects of listening proficiency and academic major on students' use of listening strategies.It also endeavors to find out the relationship between listening strategies and listening proficiency level.The participants of this study were 200 Grade two students from SuiChuan Middle school.A listening strategy questionnaire,listening proficiency test and interview were used to collect the Quantitative and Qualitative data.These data were analyzed by SPSS17.0.Descriptive statistics,Independent sample T-test and Pearson correlation analysis were used to answer the four research questions respectively.The data analysis of this study has revealed four findings:(1)Senior high school students in China do use listening strategies to improve their listening proficiency.However,the overall use of listening strategies by the senior high school students is at a medium level.(2)High proficiency listeners use more strategies than the low proficiency ones.Those two groups of students have shown significant differences in the use of advance organization,selective attention,self-monitoring,note-taking and lowing anxiety strategies.(3)Arts students use more listening strategies than the science students.In general,the art students tend to use more metacognitive strategy,while the science students prefer the cognitive strategy.There are also significant differences in the use of advance organization,self-evaluation and lowing anxiety between the two groups of students.(4)Metacognitive strategy has the highestcorrelation with the listening proficiency,followed by the cognitive strategy and social/affecitve strategy.However,the use of translation strategy has a negative correlation with listening proficiency.Based on the findings presented above,some pedagogical implications can be offered for English teaching and learning in Chinese senior high schools.First of all,instructors should develop students' awareness of using English listening strategies in listening practice.Secondly,instructors should encourage students to make a frequent use of metacognitive strategies,such as plan for the listening,pay attention to specific information and encourage students to assess their comprehension after performing a listening task.Thirdly,instructors should provide more opportunities for students to practice positive strategies,especially the self-management,inferencing,selective attention,advance organization strategies.Last but not least,instructors should take into consideration the factors,such as listening proficiency and major,when giving listening instruction.